


These are What They Call Hard Feelings (I'll Find a Way to be Without You)

by GwenTheTribble



Series: I Won't Teach You to be a Man (You're Just Going to Have to be Strong Instead) [11]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), girl!tony, listen before you read this i love steve but fuck that letter, that fucking letter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-05 00:18:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11566386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GwenTheTribble/pseuds/GwenTheTribble
Summary: She put the phone in the bottom of a drawer she never looked in and the letter in the trash.  She’d be damned if she ever needed him.





	These are What They Call Hard Feelings (I'll Find a Way to be Without You)

Before she cemented herself as the mistress of death, they used to call her Miss America.  The government guys who bought her tech would sing it as she walked into meetings, happy to hear about what death machine she’d brought them that day.  Everyone else who knew of the nickname said it biting, and harsh, and unforgiving.  

The cameras flashed.  “Hey Audey, hows it feel to know the whole world’s seen you naked?” a reporter yelled.  She laughed, and tossed her hair.  

“I’m only naked without my lipstick!” Her voice was brash, to disguise the way her breath caught in her throat.  

 

“Better than if Dad had made it yesterday,” she told Steve as she handed him his freshly repaired shield.  

“What would i do without you Stark’s?” he’d said with a smile.  

 

She’d thought he was her older brother, the way her father talked about him.  

 

Her father called her his greatest creation and she nearly screamed.   _ I built myself! I created myself!  _ She raged silently.   _ How dare he think he had any part in me?  How dare he think I needed him? _

 

She put the phone in the bottom of a drawer she never looked in and the letter in the trash.  She’d be damned if she ever needed him.  

 

The Accords needed revisions, and more revisions on top of that.  So she went before the UN, she compromised, she stood firm.  Occasionally there’d be mention of Steve on the news.  Someone had seen him and Sam in a deli, or walking down the street.  She didn't care.  She didn't fucking care.   _ Where the fuck is he, while I’m doing the work? _

She visited Rhodey, as often as she could but not as often as she’d like.  He was getting better, he and the doctors said.  Soon he’d be back in the suit, he promised, and it nearly broke her heart.   _ At least I’ve still got one brother. _

She kept track of Peter via Happy, and insisted on constant updates.  If that kid could make it through high school, he’d really be something.  

 

She’d always shown her love with gifts of tech.  What do you do with half finished prototypes?

 

She ran her company.  There was hardly a week when Congress or the UN didn't hear her testimony.  She donated and built and built and built. She saved lives, she operated with a rule book and still managed to do good.  She could go days at a time without thinking about that phone.  

But when she did.  She’d pull it out of the drawer and sit, thinking.  Sometimes about calling, but more often about smashing it with a hammer.  

 

The first time the phone rang, she laughed and laughed, until she couldn't breath, until her chest ached where he’d brought the shield down.   _ That son of a bitch.  That motherfucker.   _ Audey had lost a lot of people, and had more than a few walk away, but he was the only one that had ever come crawling back.  She threw the phone in the drawer and kicked it shut, laughed long after the thing stopped ringing.

 

Audey Stark was a product of galas and her mother’s disinterest and her father’s absence and the flash of cameras, the weight of tools in her hands and the burn of scotch, and her own two hands molding herself, sharpening.  

 

Funeral black was not a good color on an eighteen year old.  It was not a good color on a nineteen year old.  It was not a good color on a twenty-two year old.  She wore the same dress to every funeral.  Perhaps he had forgotten that she’d worn it so often when he’d written that he’d been alone since eighteen, as though she couldn't understand.  

 

The second time the phone rang, she just stared at it.  She hadn't thought he’d try again.  

 

She ran her company.  She built hospitals and schools and dug wells.  Audey Stark was a goddamned phoenix, a star that now seemed only able to rise and rise and rise.  

 

The third time the phone rang, she flipped it open on the second ring and snarled, “What the hell do you want?” 

There was a pause. 

“I just wanted to make sure you were ok, Audey, i know we’ve had our differences but-” she slammed the phone shut before he could finish. The phone went back in the drawer.  

_ I will harden my heart to him.  I won't pick up again.   _

 

Peter was with her for the fourth call, and they were laughing and joking with each other, and she was showing him ideas for a new suit.  

“What’s that?” he asked when it began to ring.  She opened it and immediately flipped it shut to end the call.  

“Nothing, not important.” She said breezily, and she almost meant it.  

 

The phone rang a fifth time and she didn't even open the drawer.  

 

The phone rang a sixth time and she didn't even hear it.  

 

But the phone rang a seventh time, and she did pick up.  Those were her friends, and she worried about them.  

“What?” She answered, cold as her father ever was.  

“Audey, we need your help, please.  I need you.” He told her, and he sounded desperate. She sat back in her chair.  

“I’m listening.”


End file.
